FALSE ALARMS AND REAL DANGERS. 



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HON. GEORGE VV^ILLARD 



VERMONTVILLE, MICHIGAN. 



JULY 3tl, 1875. 




Glass. 
Book. 






FALSE ALARMS AND REAL DANGERS. 



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HON, GEORGE ^VILLARD 



VERMONTVILLE, MICHIGAN 



JULY 3d, 1875. 



BATTLE CREEK, MICH.: 

JOURNAL STEAM BOOK AND JOB PRIN V. 



ORATION. 



Mr. Ppesident and Fellow Citizens : 

He that speaks on this birthday ot the nation, finds it difficult to 
avoid the routine of patriotic commonplace. But in the presence 
of an intelligent and thoughtful population like the one represented 
in this assemblage, to pursue a line of discussion that is not practi- 
cal and which has neither the merit of freshness nor of utility, 
would seem rather to cheapen than to honor the day we celebrate. 
That it is within the compass of my ability to meet this require- 
ment, is more than I could venture to promise ; but your demand 
should be the measure of my willingness to make an effort. The 
memories and associations of the day speak with a more significant 
emphasis and with a grander eloquence than I can summon to my 
aid ; but their sublime inspiration I would invoke, that it may, at 
this time, fill our minds, elevate our conceptions, purify our mo- 
tives and give clearness to our vision, that we may see and meet the 
imperative obligations laid upon us as citizens of this American 
Republic. 

OUR FIRST CENTURY. 

To-day. fellow citizens, we step upon the threshold of the year 
which is to close the first century of our history as a nation. That 
history, I need not say, has been an eventful one — eventful, whether 
we look at the momentous incidents which have marked our nation- 
al career, or at the revolutions which have been witnessed among 
the other great communities of the earth. The Republic, from 
comparative obscurity among the nations, has become conspicuous 
by its achievement, and still more by the impression which men , 
have of its destiny. From a feeble and derided infancy which i 
promised a doubtful future to its friends, and afforded the expec- 1 
tation of sure triumph to its enemies, it has grown to a manhoody' 
which, in its strength ^nd vigor, if it does not win universal favor, 
at least compels universal admiration. 

PROMINENT FEATURES OF THE ERA. 

Since our nation began, great changes have been wrought in the 
political aspect of the old world. The map of Europe has been 



again and again reconstructed. States and kingdoms have exem- 
plified the too common instability of human institutions and the 
insufficiency of the basis upon which political societies are too fre- 
quently founded. Still these changes and revolutions have not been 
such as to cause regret or to arouse distrust. The period which 
comprises our national record, has been the world's bright particu- 
lar period of growth in material prosperity, in social enlighten- 
ment and in substantial civilization. Science and the arts have not 
merely advanced, but they have assumed new and unwonted* thea- 
tres for the exhibition of their capabilities, and have so fully de- 
veloped into new and higher forms of organized utility, that they 
are to be no longer recognized by their former features and out- 
lines. Industry has secured a marvelous multiplication of the in- 
struments required for the accomplishment of its results. Business 
has discovered far ampler and more remunerative fields for the dis- 
play of its energies, and has extended its dominion by wholly 
novel and hitherto unused modes of conquest. 

Thus, while the Republic enters upon the one hundreth year of 
its existence, with a conscious developement of it own powers and 
resources, it finds that the ouside world, in the meanwhile, has 
been far from remaining stationary. The growth of the nation's 
faculties and the developement of its own interior political system, 
have been coincident with an altered phase of human society else- 
where. This growth of the Republic has of necessity involved the 
formation of new links of intercourse and the assumption of new 
responsibilities in its inevitable relation to a world which, in 
thought, in modes of action, in the boldness of its undertakings, in 
the reach and sweep of its enterprise, in its ambition for grand and 
successful achievement, in its steady measurement of the utility of 
theory by the results of practice, has been revolutionized since the 
memorable day on which our fathers staked their lives, their for- 
tunes and their sacred honor for liberty and independence, and, 
in the unselfishness of their devotion, opened a new chapter and 
fixed a new era in the history of mankind. 

WORK OF THE PAST CENTURY — ORGANIZATION. 

In the century now closing, the really great questions with which 
the nation has been required to grapple, ha\^e been those of organ- 
ization. This work may, however, be now regarded as complete. ^ 
The Republic is now established upon the foundations of sectional 
harmony and universal liberty. The chief causes which gave sus- 
picion of its imperfection, have, fortunately, been removed. The 



struggles of the last ten years have crowned our national temple 
with its finishing arch, and men may no longer say that here is a 
partially completed structure. The critics of other lands can no 
more exclaim, 'Here a nation began to build, but was unable to 
finish ;' for they behold that from foundation stone to dome, 
nothing has been omitted that would render it a fitting abode of 
freedom ; a place where all men may find citizenship, and may 
learn that citizenship also invariably implies fraternity. 

The sources of sectional discord which, hidden or operative, 
have existed since the formation of the Union, have been eradi- 
cated. No root of sectional bitterness remains in fact, or can much ,. 
longer remain in imagination. The animosities of the late war / 
have been overwhelmed by the successive waves of patriotic aspir- J 
ation and fraternal sentiment, which have swept over the land du-i 
ring the decade that has since elapsed ; --^nd now, in this centenni-j 
al year of the Republic, in the mighty upswelling of the flood of 
union feeling in every section of the country, there comes the 
fiuctus decumanus, as the Romans termed the tenth wave, which, 
with more volume and steadier force than all the rest, will bury be- 
neath its whelming tide every obstacle to union and every disposi- 
tion to prolong a strife which has no rational motive or even sig- 
nificance. 

WORK OF THE NEXT CENTURY — DEVELOPEMENT. 

But if the first century of our history has been the period of or- 
ganization, we may so far lift the veil of the future as to enable us 
to predict that the century upon which we are next to enter will be 
the period of development. The completion of the structure will 
be followed by fitting it more fully, and in all its parts, for its des- 
tined use. Hence the national questions that now require our at- 
tention are not those which concern the rights of the citizen, but 
those which relate to the means for providing and diffusing the 
agencies of a common prosperity. They do not so much relate to 
the constitutional guarantees of State and individual equality — for 
these are settled — but to methods for developing our immense re- 
sources and to the device of policies which in securing to industry 
a profitable return, shall widely and impartially distribute the prac- 
tical advantages to be gained from political association in a gov- 
ernment like our own. The American people, in the future that 
is now upon them and within the limits of which they have begun 
to tread, must gird themselves no longer to solve the problems of 
political right, but the now far more imperative problems of polit- 
ical economy. For if the next century shall disclose a great strug- 



gle in this country, as it may, that struggle will not have for its 
rallying summons, the cry for liberty, but the cry for bread. 

PAST AND FUTURE DANGERS UNLIKE. 

From this view of the nation's present posture, fellow citizens, 
the inference is plain that the dangers which have beset the Re- 
public in the past are not to be apprehended in the future. Alarms or- 
riginating in the period of organization will continue to be sounded 
even after the causes which gave rise to them have become obsolete. 
On the other hand, new and actual dangers which the nation, in 
its advancement to an untried experience, is called to encounter, 
may be wholly overlooked in the din and clamor aroused by fears 
founded in misapprehension and supported by sinister design. If 
I shall be successful in properly warning those that hear me not to 
permit these false alarms to divert attention from the real dangers 
that lie before us, I shall have accomplished what I chiefly desire 
in this address. 

4 

FORM OF GOVERNMENT NO CAUSE FOR ALARM. 

The assured future of this great Republic is of such priceless 
value that it is no wonder that men make it the subject of appre- 
hension. Prominent among the fallacious fears which, at one time 
or another, have gained currency, is the one suggested by our form 
of government. 

The notion so prevalent in Europe that a popular government 
contains within itself the elements of its own dissolution, secures 
a much too ready acquiescence in our country. The remark is not 
infrequent here in the North but is still niDre trite in the South , 
that the nation needs a stronger government; and by stronger, is 
meant more conformed to the usages of monarchy, with the powers 
of the rulers enlarged, with less of responsibility to the citizen, 
and in brief, less popular and democratic. But where the people 
are intelligent and virtuous — and they will be virtuous where they 
are truly intelligent — the democratic form of rule is the strongest 
and the most enduring that can be devised. History yields no 
proof of the inherent weakness of a "government of the people, 
by the people and for the people," but invariably shows that when- 
ever Republics have been overborne by internal disaster, that dis- 
aster has arisen through a violation, or through a partial and in- 
complete application of republican principles. 

If governments derive their powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned, and if they are strong in proportion to the fulness of that 
consent, what form of government can be stronger than the one in 



which that consent forms the exclusive basis upon which its main- 
tenance and continuance are made to rest ? But we need rely 
neither upon logical inference nor upon remote examples in proof 
of this position: for in the first century of our history — culmina- 
ting, as it does, in the exhibition of a popular support more cor- 
dial and universal than the world has ever seen displayed after a 
similar contest — ^we have an instance that popular responsibility in 
the fabric of government, is not an element of weakness, but an 
element of strength. As in the Hebrew annals, republican Israel 
won seceding Benjamin back to the union, when monarchical Israel 
could not avoid permanent division in the subsequent civil strife, 
so in this nation the people have triumphed in an effort in which 
a monarch must have failed. Indeed so general is the conviction 
that the American people have both the motive and the ability to 
exclusively manage their own affairs for their own welfare, that we 
may dismiss all apprehension suggested by our form of government 
as a perfectly groundless alarm. 

NOR EXTENSION OF POLITICAL PRIVILEGE. 

The recent extension of political power and privilege to classes 
which have not hitherto enjoyed them is made the occasion for re- 
newed fears concerning the stability of our institutions — fears, 
however, as baseless as any terror ever conceived in the extrava- 
gance of childless fancy. The public safety, so far from being en- 
dangered, is rendered more secure by the removal of all barriers 
of political distinction erected by the prejudice of race. To un- 
justly exclude any class of men from a share in shaping the rule 
under which they are to live, is to make them the enemies of the 
government instead of its friends. Their participation of privi- 
lege secures their allegiance, and the Republic is made stronger by 
enlarging the area of personal responsibility upon which it rests 
for support. Those who nurture a solicitude in regard to the pol- 
icy of the nation in establishing equal civil rights and impartial 
suffrage, give a too ready welcome to an apprehension which must 
shortly disappear before the convincing proof of successful exper- 
iment. 

NOR DIVERSITY OF POPULATION. 

Nor does this extension derive increased cause for alarm from 
the fact that the nation is not a homogeneous people. The Repub- 
lic is all the stronger by reason of the intertwining strands fur- 
ished by the varied races of which it is composed. The great mis- 
take in the effort to give durability to national constitutions has 
been made in the omission to embrace all races and tribes under 



one broad canopy of equal citizenship. The Athenian democracy 
confined itself to the limits of a favored race, and it could not sur- 
vive the rejection of the very principle from which its life was de- 
rived. The Roman Republic placed itself in the inevitable current 
of a fatal destiny when it proposed arbitrary dominion, and not 
political incorporation, as the sign by which its conquests were 
gained. Unlike these governments, the American Republic adopts 
a policy which, from the imperative motive of self-interest, if from 
no other, must inevitably transform every human shoulder into a 
prop to sustain the constitution, and induce every citizen, of what- 
ever ancestry or blood, to fly with alacrity to its defence. 

Upon our shores have been gathered the representatives of near- 
ly every nation of the old world, not alone of Europe, but of Africa 
and Asia. We have among us the fortitude, the endurance, the enter- 
prise of the Saxon race ; the inflexibility, determination and reso- 
lution of the Teutonic ; the vivacity, sprightliness and generosity 
of the Celtic ; while in some portions of the country, more espe- 
cially at the extreme south, there is an admixture of the mobility, 
gayety and impulsiveness of the Latin race, derived by emigration 
from Southern Europe. To these we may add the qualities with 
which nature has endowed those who trace their origin from civi- 
lizations still more diverse, and who shall say that they, as well as 
the rest, do not contribute characteristics which shall be of ser- 
vice in maintaining this, our stronghold of universal freedom ? The 
prejudices and interests of the one class will be counterbalanced by 

Ahe prejudices and interests of another; and the erroneous views 
and predilections incident to the race characteristics or traditions 
of any one portion of the population will find a sufficient 
antidote and correction in the precisely contrary, but equally 
fallacious conclusions of another portion ; so thai in this wide ex- 
tension of liberty and equal toleration, our political machinery will 
be endued with the power of self-adjustment, and its chances of 
perpetuity proportionately enhanced. Every cry which men's fears 

1 may raise against the political equality of race is beyond contra- 

\ diction, fellow citizens, an entirely false alarm. 

^ NOR EXTENT OF TERRITORY. 

Another somewhat similar apprehension is that suggested by our 
wide extent of territory. Since our recent troubles were sectional, 
it is quite natural that public attention should be directed to a fea- 
ture which has not unfrequently been the cause for the dismember- 
ment and dissolution of empires. The functions of government, 
operating over a territory so vast, with many of its parts so remote 



from the governing centre, are thought to be incapable of effecting 
their design, while diversity of interest on the part of the governed 
only adds to the intensity of the evil. 

But it should be remembered that under the American constitu- 
tion, the most important powers of government, the disposal of 
questions of the most vital interest, the determination and decision 
of subjects concerning which communities or individuals are apt to 
become involved in controversy, are left to State and local author- 
ties ; and only in a few justifiable exceptions clearly pointed out in 
the nation's supreme law, can be ever brought within the province 
of national administration. The responsibility of adjusting these 
questions being thus removed from the general government, there 
is no occasion for its exercise of those functions which distance im- 
pairs, or for incurring the jealousy and hostility engendered by di- 
verse sectional interests. 

Indeed, the late perilous contest through which the nation has 
passed, though a sectional one, did not spring either from the ex- 
tent or the diversity of the domain embraced by the Republic. 
That contest may have been territorial in its occurrence, but was 
not territorial in its cause. It was produced by an irreconcilable 
diversity of institutions, not by any parallels of latitude or lines of 
longitude. But if territorial diversity did not cause the rebellion, 
it was territorial tenacity which prevented its success. The Mis- 
sissippi river demanded an integrity of American territory through 
which its waters might pass to the sea, and thus the impelling force 
of popular sentiment, suggested by the idea of the national domain 
which embraces nearly everything truly valuable on this North 
American continent, enabled us to save for ourselves and our chil- 
dren, an inheritance of freedom which, through other causes, had 
been well nigh lost. They are false prophets, therefore, who would 
excite alarm from this beneficent circumstance which has but just 
now proved to be our salvation. Our diversity of soil and climate, 
our numerous lakes and rivers, with our railways and other chan- 
nels of intercommunication, and all the varied agencies of com- 
mercial intercourse, interlocking the entire country in a perfectly 
indissoluble net-work of enduring ligatures, are all so many argu- 
ments for the preservation of the Union, and so many guarantees 
and sponsors for its perpetuity. 

NOR INCREASE OF WEALTH. 

The increase of wealth is another occasion of false alarm. There 
is a popular notion that the accumulation of capital endangers the 
national safety. Republics are supposed to be undermined by lux- 



ury, and luxury is regarded as the necessary consequent of the pro- 
duction of wealth. But let me say, fellow citizens, that poverty is 
no protection to liberty, and that freedom and financial prosperity 
are invariably associated. Besides this, fvery dollar earned by the 
honest citizen is an additional pledge of his fealty to the govern- 
ment in securing to him the right to possess and enjoy what he has 
obtained ; so that loyalty gains an added strength from pecuniary 
investment. The outlay of the products of industry all over the 
land, increasing in our country from year to year, as gained from 
the farms, the workshops, the mines, the looms, the furnaces, and 
all the varied sources of our increasing wealth, are daily and hourly 
weaving those golden bands that bind this mighty nation into one 
united whole, and give a promise of its future in which no mere 
sentimental, croaking alarmist shall be able to shake our faith. 

REAL DANGERS UNNOTICED. 

But, fellow citizens, while the air is filled with these false alarms, 
and while evils wholly imaginary form the staple of political agita- 
tion, we should not too readily felicitate ourselves that the future 
pathway of the nation is wholly void of peril. Alarmists repeat 
the old warnings and endeavor to revive the distrusts and anxie- 
ties of a past period, but we may be assured that our dangers are 
of an entirely different sort. They are not the kind to excite pop- 
ular attention or to awaken popular solicitude. They are neither 
striking in their aspect nor imposing in their menace, and may 
be classified among the things that come not by observation. Nev- 
ertheless they will soon be mure obvious, and will develope into 
the most conspicuous objects within our political horizon. 

THE SPECIAL DANGER OF THE FUTURE. 

These dangers all bear relation to a possible result, to provide 
against which American statesmanship should summon its foresight 
and wisdom. The effort to organize and complete a government 
of equal liberty and impartial law, only found its final triumph af- 
ter a four years' sectional contest, whose record was marked with 
desolation and traced in blood. But if another war shall shake 
this continent and put in jeopardy our free institutions, let me tell 
you, fellow citizens, that it will not be a war of sections ; it will 
not involve an array of the South against the North, or of the West 
against the East ; it will not arise from any difficulties growing out 
of sectional hostility or sectional prejudice ; but if the second cen- 
tury of the Republic shall find a serious interruption of domestic 
tranquillity, and shall open another page of carnage, it will be from 



a cause of which even the most superficial observation cannot fail 
to give us a glimpse ; it will be from an evil with which we now 
see France forced to contend in a desperate effort for her self pres- 
ervation, and which, in various phases in other lands, seeks to blot 
out some of the most valuable guarantees of individual right, to de- 
stroy the bulwarks which protect the individual possession of 
property, to overturn the foundations of individual liberty as se- 
cured by law, and, in brief, to subject personal freedom and per- 
sonal acquisitions to the disposal of those who have resolved that 
their most expeditious way of obtaining what they need, is by rapine 
and force. Should war raise his wrinkled front and sound his 
dread alarums in our country, either in our day or in that of our 
children, it will be the offspring of that central evil of the future 
— the evil of Communism. The subordinate dangers that lead to 
this one great peril ought not to escape observation. 

THE DANGER FROM PARTY PATRONAGE. 

One subsidiary danger relates to administration. It consists in 
the threatened subversion of a distinctive principle of free govern- 
ment, and forces itself upon public notice in the prevalent method 
of making executive appointments. 

It is an essential maxim of political wisdom that the three great 
departments of government, the Executive, the Legislative and the 
Judicial should be distinct. The duties of each should be dis- 
charged without interference from either of the others. But this 
maxim is disregarded. The members of the national legislature, 
by a vicious and dangerous usage, have intruded upon the prerog- 
atives which the constitution expressly assigned to tVie Executive 
of the nation, and by assuming to recommend candidates, they vir- 
tually become the instruments through which official positions are 
secured. To say nothing of the evil of placing individual members 
of Congress and the heads of the several Executive departments 
and bureaus under an obligation for reciprocity of favors, and thus 
exposing them to the temptation of subordinating duty to personal 
interest, there is the still greater and more momentous hazard of 
placing the government under the control and dominion, not of 
the constitutional rulers acting under constitutional forms, but of 
that monstrous aggregation of irresponsibility which, in all coun- 
tries, is too often developed under the form of party. 

In our Republic, this evil is the greater, for the reason that party 
is here more potent than among European nations, since it con- 
trols,, not alone the selection of officials in the legislative, but also 
in the executive branch of the government. In Great Britain, 



only the members of the Legislature are elected ; the Executive 
head of the nation is not dependent upon party for his position. 
With us, both are elective, and more frequently than otherwise, 
owe their existence to the same partisan origin and support. The 
natural tendency, therefore, to a lack of independence, on the part 
of each, is sufficiently great without increased inducement. This 
lends additional weight to the caution of removing, so far as possi- 
ble, the responsibility of making executive appointments, beyond 
the immediate and direct influence of party dictation, and, by con- 
sequence, beyond Congressional control. It is this consideration 
which leads to the demand for a thorough, practical reform of the 
civil service. The knowledge of an evil so injurious to honest and 
efficient administration, induces regret that the accomplishment of 
the reform should be deferred. 

FROM CORRUPT ELECTIONS. 

Intimately allied with this danger, both in origin and result, is 
the alarming increase of the use of money in our elections. Bribery 
and the open purchase of votes may be rare, but who does not 
know that even in our own commonwealth, where this evil has been 
comparatively unworthy of notice, money is becoming a much too 
frequent and efficient instrument in the political canvas. This 
agency may not yet have reached that measure of imperial dictation 
which, in the decline of Roman liberty, enabled the poet Ovid to 
declare, ^'dat census honores,'" "it is the tax roll that confers hon- 
ors," but there is enough of the danger visible to induce a free and 
intelligent people, who desire to maintain their liberties and pre- 
serve their institutions, to guard against an agent which fraud and 
ambition are only too ready to enlist in their service. Parties are 
essential to the national welfare. It requires effort to sustain and 
conduct them, but when a purchased ballot shall be their means of 
control, and official plunder shall be their aim, the country be- 
comes endangered by a partyocracy which corrupts the entire gov- 
ernment and hides every pillar of the constitution beneath its 
deadly and corroding incrustations. Should such a crisis come in 
the distant future, which, may heaven avert, the Republic will have 
advanced to the very brink of that dread abyss where it requires 
no remarkable foresight to perceive that there would be real danger. 

FROM AN EVIL FINANCIAL SYSTEM. 

The next peril which I shall mention, fellow citizens, is the 
financial one. The question whether a dollar shall be a dollar is 
one which the American people are required to determine, and the 
decision involves consequences of immense moment. Let us leave 



13 

out of the consideration all that relates to commercial credit, the 
violation of faith, the temptation furnished for the crime of na- 
tional repudiation, the general bankruptcy and financial ruin that, 
sooner or later, must overtake a people which bids adieu to a sound 
financial basis, and content ourselves with a glance at the effect 
which a continued issue of government paper, to be used as money, 
must have upon our political system Setting aside the evident vio- 
lation of the constitution which such an issue implies, and also the 
fact that statesmen only resorted to it under the imperative neces- 
sities of war, this clothing the government with the power to make 
money by merely placing a stamp upon paper, is fraught with a 
peril whose magnitude is scarcely within the reach of human cal- 
culationK 

An essential security to free government has been sought in the 
provision by which the power to impose taxes and to raise money 
has been restricted to the immediate representatives of the people. 
It was the transgression of this principle which sent Charles the 
First to the scaffold. British precedents combine with American 
constitutional law to put a jealous guard around that great bulwark 
of national safety and popular freedom. But of what avail are all 
these efforts of persistent care and anxious watchfulness, if the gov- 
ernment, under the thousand quibbling pretexts which may always 
be summoned at will, may use its power to create obligations from 
blank paper, and to force from the people a loan by discretionary 
issues of currency? In opening the way for the assumption of this 
privilege, fellow citizens, you not only give to the Executive the 
control of the public purse, but you confer upon him the power to 
fill it with promises, for the fulfillment of which the nation itself is 
mortgaged. Should some future President aim at a permanent 
grasp upon the supreme power, he could use your promises to pay 
as a means to raise and support his legionaries for the overthrow of 
your liberties. 

Nor is such an event wholly chimerical. We have only to im- 
agine a condition, such as repudiation and bankruptcy must inev- 
itably produce, an utter prostration of our industries, a general ar- 
rest of productive energy in all parts of the land, the discharge 
of laborers from all steady employment, and added to this, the 
peculiar disposition to dependence shown by certain classes of our 
population, both North and South, in order to realize that the 
clamor for bread may cooperate with executive ambition, and both 
together, by the agency of a depraved but convenient financial 
system, may wreck all the fair and fond hopes which men have 



cherished in regard to the future destiny of the Republic. Such is 
the financial danger; and a wise people should be warned in time 
and resist any and every policy which should make it even remote- 
ly possible. If ever our nation shall be called upon to encounter 
the Commune, irredeemable paper money Avill be revealed in close 
alliance with the calamity, if indeed it shall not prove to have been 
its prominent cause. 

FROM COMMERCIAL OBSTRUCTIONS. 

A commercial danger, though by no means so conspicuous, has 
recently seemed to menace the public welfare and to be an obsta- 
cle to general prosperity. Monopoly in this country has chiefly 
displayed its power in the control of our channels of internal com- 
merce, and has created justifiable apprehensions that this control 
might become a permanent popular burden. The agricultural pop- 
ulation of the Great West have been especially solicitous in regard 
to the paralysis which it, in some measure, brings upon those 
mighty industrial forces and energies which are so rapidly turning 
the vast interior of the continent into an area of the highest civili- 
zation. This evil is one, however, which the people will soon find 
a method to remove or modify. That this method will be the 
opening of great national highways, by rail or by water, for the 
transmission of the immense products of our industry, is an expec- 
tation too reasonable to be kept within the limits of mere con- 
jecture ; and many of the most practical minds of the nation see in 
this plan the solution of a difficulty which, it must be acknowledged, 
has not yet found a remedy. Gigantic aggregations of capital have 
untold means of political corruption and national mischief, and 
warrant a prudent restriction of their movements without, however, 
repressing legitimate enterprise or invading constitutional rights. 
I need not say that to do this with discriminating wisdom is just 
now an imperative demand of statesmanship. 

FROM DEPOPULARIZING EDUCATION. 

Still another question is suggestive of a danger whose importance 
should be undervalued by no one who calls himself an American. 
By the side of purity of administration and financial integrity 
should stand the cause of popular education. When these three 
march abreast and are not allowed to falter m their step, whatever 
else may come, the nation is safe. Palsied, then, be the hand that, 
under any pretext or from any motive, religious or secular, would 
attempt to depopularize our American system of education, and to 
interrupt the usefulness or impair the efficiency of that indispensa- 



15 

ble instrument and safeguard of liberty furnished in our public 
schools. If sectarianism can force us to relinquish that cardinal 
article of our faith that causes us to cling to the common school as 
the sheet anchor of our national safety, it can blot from our mem- 
ories Plymouth Rock, and every other remembrance that gives sa- 
credness to our history. When we repudiate our ancestry and 
throw contempt upon American institutions, then, but not till then, 
will we abandon the idea that the perpetuity of the Republic and an 
unsectarian system of public education are inseparably identified. 

THE REPUBLIC WILL TRIUMPH. 

But, fellow citizens, these dangers of the future will all be suc- 
cessfully encountered and overcome. The questions incident to 
our national development will find a prosperous disposal in that 
popular intelligence, in that undeviating patriotism, in that auspi- 
cious foreboding of future destiny, which are so clearly the inherit- 
ance of the American people ; and more than all, in that divine 
guidance and protection which have brought them safely through the 
troubles and difficulties of the period of organization. The watch- 
word of our fathers, ^'Quitranstulif, sustinet,'" "He that has brought 
us through, will continue to sustain," is still the ineffaceable legend 
which the eye of patriotic faith descries upon our national banner. 
Our real perils, as one after the other they are met and conquered, 
will be transferred to the list of false alarms. The successive con- 
tests through which the Republic is called to pass, will only add to 
its strength and enlarge the scope of its beneficence. The 
strifes of the past have become our proudest triumphs : the strifes 
of the future will bring results which shall be an equal warrant for 
national pride. 

CONCLUSION. 

Let this, our unfaltering faith in the final success of the Union, 
be to us a perpetual inspiration. This faith should stir within us a 
resolve that the grandeur of our citizenship in a Republic like this, 
shall never fail to secure from us a corresponding return of obliga- 
tion. Our responsibility is measured by our privilege ; and our 
sure hope that failure cannot attend our effort, should nerve us to 
an unremitting and conscientious performance of every patriotic 
and public duty. 

When our descendants shall pass in review the deeds of the cen- 
tury on whose threshold we are about to step, let them be able to 
record that we entered upon it with a not less zeal for freedom and 
aspiration for fraternity, than that which glowed in the bosoms of 
the generation which laid the foundations of our national structure. 



i6 

Let them record that we, with perfect union and with patriotic 
fervor, applied ourselves to whatever task the demands of the time 
required at our hands ; and let it be our praise and their pride 
that we rightly conceived and nobly performed our part in trans- 
mitting, with an added value, the inheritance of union and liber- 
ty which we have received. Thus may they, in their turn, as well 
as we, take up the glad refrain inspired by unwavering faith and 
hope, and shout onward to the coming centuries, with exultation 
and with confidence, 

"GOD SAVE THE REPUBLIC." 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



011 802 098 4 




